Stole From Father

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31087, 16 June 1966, Page 3

Stole From Father

(N.Z. Press Association)

AUCKLAND, June 15. A man who admitted stealing £15,245 from his father’s law firm was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment by Mr Justice Hardie Boys in the Supreme Court at Auckland today. A 39-year-old woman, on a charge of stealing £l4OO from the firm, was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment They are Leslie Edward Thwaites, aged 37, a law clerk, and Lillian Viola Weir, a nurse, who were represented by Mr L. P. Leary, Q.C.. with him Mr H. T. D. Knight. Mr C. M. Nicholson appeared for the Crown. Thwaites appeared for sentence on two charges of theft while a servant of Thwaites and O’Connell, solicitors, of Auckland. Weir appeared for sentence on one charge of theft while a servant of the firm. His Honour said he had before him a whole portfolio of reports and he believed he was in possession of every available fact relating to the money. An agreed statement from

the accountants was that Thwaites stole in all £17,237 from the firm. His Honour said he was satisfied that Thwaites had no hidden or undisclosed hoard. He was also satisfied that £7497 represented thefts from which Thwaites gained no advantage. “You stole the money but used that part of it to cover up obvious defalcations: in fact you robbed Peter to pay Paul.”

A factor in Thwaites’ case was what His Honour interpreted as hysteria over what Thwaites’ believed to be a possible change of sex. This was claimed to underly and

explain what happened, he said.

Mr Leary suggested that Thwaites broke down in health through overwork. Thwaites discovered he had a chest complaint which gave him deep anxiety, he said. To Weir, His Honour said it was not often that the Court had to sentence a woman of former good character .and repute on such a serious charge. There was a suggestion that she was in part under the domination of Thwaites, but in some respects she was the stronger of the two. Theft as a servant must be met by deterrent punishment, he said. He sentenced her to 15 months’ imprisonment.